authorityresearch.com NTL And BSTEP

Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.

Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. And they say, How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the most High? Behold, there are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.

Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning. If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.

Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee.

Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou has destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.

Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him: When ye say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?

There is no God else beside me; a just God and a Savior; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed.

Jeremiah 9:23-24

Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.

Kenneth Benne’s second book on the National Training Laboratories was THE LABORATORY METHOD OF CHANGING AND LEARNING THEORY AND APPLICATION. Some of the organizations, and their date of origin, which have come from the NTL’s are listed below: During the late 40s and early 50s with grants from the Carnegie Corporation the NTL “developed a national headquarters and a year-round program as a part of the Division of Adult Education of the National Education Association.”

1956 – Management Work Conference Church Workers Conference (National Council of Churches)

1964 – European Institute for Trans-national Studies in Group and Organizational Development

1965 – Presidents’ Conference for presidents of major industries and businesses

Jane Howard in her book Please Touch: A Guide Tour of the Human Potential Movement (McGraw-Hill, NY, 1970) gives an extended list of organizations, and Who’s Who that were involved with the NTL’s up to 1970. Called T-groups (Training groups) and following the encounter groups of the NTL, Howard writes “the human potential groups were striving to reacquaint us with the ‘affective domain,’ and help us to be less ‘cognitive.’” Small groups were the key to the movement’s success. Administrators and faculty as well as students were the main target to be exposed to “affective education,” otherwise known as “sensitivity training.”

“Growth Centers,” (like Esalen, etc.) she wrote “began as a West Coast phenomenon. The more conservative groups organized much earlier in the East” (Bethel). The Growth Centers’ “most prestigious founders” were Maslow and Rogers and ranged from their “Basic Encounter Workshop” at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla to “Nude Encounter Therapy” sessions (blessed by Dr. Maslow) in Los Angeles. Warren Bennis stated “There is no sacredness to anything, including encounter.”

Maslow commented to Howard “We have to teach everyone to be a therapist.” He recognized the difficulty in getting the public schools to participate, “Reforming a school system is like melting a glacier.” Administrators were the key to its success. Without a change in the Administrator the school system itself could not be changed.

Moreno stated “I told Freud he put people on a couch and isolated them, which was entirely wrong. We don’t live on a couch; we live in groups from birth to death. Freud took people into the past, I take them into the present and future. Psychodrama deals with the Here-and-Now.” As Howard put it “the groups provide the right gemeinschaft for the angsts of our zeitgeist.” Moreno commented “Right now (in America, 1970) we’re going through a transitional period of anarchy and chaos. The giants are dead and 200 million midgets are in charge. We have to wait for what we need: a psychiatry and sociatry for all mankind.”

According to Howard the Human Potential Movement, (on which OBE, TQM, and STW are built), stems from Dr. Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist of the late 1880’s who recognized the differences between Gesselschaft (a patriarchal hierarchy), and Gemeinschaft (a matriarchal community. Others who followed were Joseph Pratt, Trigant Burrow, J. L. Moreno, Frank Buchman, Frederick Perls, and Wilfred Bion (Tavistock). “Tavistock groups are emotionally right wing of the NTL. They’re to the NTL what the NTL is to Esalen.” Howard noted Bion, the English psychologist who eventually moved to Los Angeles, as its founder. Bion was to Tavistock in London, as Kurt Lewin was to the NTL in America. Margaret Rioch, Washington D.C. School of Psychiatry and the National Institute of Mental Health, officially linked the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to America in 1965.

Kurt Lewin believed that self-help groups could prevent the totalitarianism which developed in Germany under Hitler. He fled Berlin and came to America in 1933. Howard writes that “The small group struck him as the obvious link between individual and social dynamics.”

Lewin believed he could use the group dynamic process to overcome “the social restraints imposed on groups by technology, economics, law, and politics.” He believed the use of “Force Field Analysis” could help people identify the negative forces (pre-set standards) which acted as a barrier to self-determined, felt needs satisfaction and positive forces which liberated self-determined behavior.

T-groups were originally developed by Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress. Both were involved in the Basic Skill Training Group held in Connecticut in 1946 (see Benne’s book Human Relations in Curriculum Change, 1954). “The use of groups for growth purposes is as old as human life on earth . . . these studies were rather late in coming,” Kenneth Benne.

With the help of the NEA, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt continued Lewin’s dream by setting up the first National Training Lab at Bethel, Main in 1947. That year Kurt Lewin died. Douglas McGregor’s humanistic (anti-authoritarian) management theories, i. e. “sensitivity training,” developed at Berkeley under the Industrial Relations Institute (joining labor-management relations with community service) brought the NTL to UCLA in 1954, forming the Western Training Lab.

Carl Rogers used the basic encounter group as an instrument for self-directed change in Immaculate Heart school system in Los Angeles. Dr. William Coulson overseeing this project stated that the project “simply fortifies the staffs’ willingness to run risks. The individual is strengthened in encounter groups. He learns to trust his experience.” He saw the encounter group “as a medium of harnessing the energy of the student revolutionary.” Today those schools do not exist. The school disintegrated under the watchful eye of Rogers and Coulson. Both discovered a “pattern of failure” with the group encounter process. Rogers saw it as a pattern hard to overcome, traditional minds tended to prevail in society despite the pressure to change, while Coulson saw the process itself as a failure. Coulson continues to sound the warning today.

The NTL’s carried out labs “geared to the special needs of key executives, middle-management workers and, corporation presidents.” Companies were encouraged to commit themselves to five years of their time to the NTL’s.

The National Council of Churches helped sponsor encounter groups such as “Theological Reflection on the Human Potential.” As Jane Howard stated in 1970, “One could make a life work of visiting all the churches that have been affected by sensitivity training.” Religious institutions such as “Willow Creek” and “Saddleback” push the encounter group experience in churches even today.

The encounter group experience produces an “ephemeral” effect on its participants. Like an intoxicating drug it keeps those who have experienced it “clamoring for more.”

A few of the Growth Centers, as mentioned by Howard, which were in operation by 1970, were: Gestalt Therapy Institute of San Diego; Institute of Group Psychotherapy in Beverly Hills, Nexus in El Cajon; Western Behavioral Science Institute in LaJolla; American Association for Humanistic Psychology in San Francisco; Berkeley Center for Human Interaction; Esalen Institute in Big Sur and San Francisco; San Francisco Gestalt Therapy Institute; Institute for Group and Family Studies in Palo Alto; Senoi Counseling and Growth Center in Eugene, Oregon; Center of Man in Mincanopy, Florida; Family Relations Institute in Annadale, Virginia; Laos House: Southwest Center for Human Potential in Austin, Texas; Association of Community Trainers in New York City; Institute for Experimental Education in Lexington, Massachusetts; Institute for Rational Living in Philadelphia; Moreno Institute of Psychodrama in New York City and Beacon, New York; National Council of Churches in New York City; Psychosynthetic Research Foundation in New York City; and Gestalt Training Institute of Canada at Lake Cowichan, Vancouver, British Columbia.

By 1970 there were six NTL divisions: NTL Institute for Applied Behavior Science (Washington D.C.); Midwest Group for Human Resources in Kansas City, Missouri; NTL Institute in Portland, Oregon; NTL Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah; NTL Labs in Bethel, Maine; Cedar City, Utah; Lake Arrowhead, California; and Western Training Labs at UCLA in Los Angeles. The Diaprax article Regional Training Laboratories (Federally funded Marxist training camps) lists the contemporary NTL’s, now called Regional Training Labs.

Howard’s 1970 list of companies which use NTL training reads like Who’s Who; American Airlines, Boeing, Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Foods, IBM, Kaiser Aluminum, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Procter and Gamble, Standard Oil, TRW, just to mention a few.

Her listing of colleges and universities is likewise extensive, mentioning Stanford, Brigham Young, Georgia State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, Universities of Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Oregon, Utah, Michigan, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Harvard, Maryland, Vermont, Yeshiva, Temple, Teachers College of Columbia, MIT, SUNY, New York, George Washington (D.C.), Boston College, Georgia State College, Colorado State College, etc. Today it would be a short list to name those who have not participated with the NTL’s group encounter agenda.

All I can say to those who use this process, although I doubt they would or even could understand, “Professing to be wise, they have become Fools.” Herein lies the title to a book Death to America. Who killed America? You did. When you refused to proclaim the Word of God or stopped doing so when confronted with group dynamics, you killed America. Every time you made mankind, instead of God, the source for your felt needs satisfaction, America died.

A review of the final report of US dept. of HEW contract no. OEC-0-9-320424-402 (010), by Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, Dec. 31, 1969.

BSTEP, a “comprehensive program” (Gestalt-perpetual culture change, performance-based, evaluation) for the restructuring of Michigan State University into a NTL, through its curriculum (“Behavioral Science paradigm”) was initiated on Dec. 31, 1967. With the use of “measurable” “laboratory-centered experiences” (developmental experiences” for the purpose of “systematizing of teacher behavior”) BSTEP would provide “alternative solutions” to traditional education (“goodness,” “badness,” time-based, measurement) programs (referred to as “the slum of the American educational system.”)

With the development of “a new kind of school teacher . . . engaged in teaching as clinical practice,” where teachers “function as a responsible agent of social change” (ability to relate with, manipulate, and evaluate student behavior), “old value systems” would be modified and new ones developed. Student teachers would be “sensitized” to “diversity,” and “non-Western thought and values, . . . promoting an understanding of human behavior in humanistic terms.” (“How do children from upper-class, middle-class, lower-class homes behave? What are their respective needs?” The NTL developed program “facilitates” learning experiences with the “prescriptive” (not just descriptive) cycle of “reflecting (describing, analyzing), proposing (hypothesizing, prescribing), and doing (treating, and observing consequences).” Faculty Orientation and In-Service Education programs would be build on BSTEP experiences.

A “coalition among educational agencies, professional organizations, community resources, and business and industry” would be built upon the philosophical position of “adaptability to change,” requiring “non-school resources” to join in partnership with educational agencies with “the most modern technology available” in “information storage and retrieval,” for “tracks” of “behavioral attitudes and achievements” (“The BSTEP information retrieval system will store records on the personal characteristics of all BSTEP students”), “ERIC Clearinghouse on Teacher Education.” “Major additional resources” according to the study, would be necessary to “restructure the total curriculum.” Funded on March 1, 1968, BSTEP united with the U.S. Ofc. Of Ed. on October 31, 1968.

“Systems analysis” was incorporated in the scheme, under contract with HEW. The development for the design of this project was the work of the Southwest Regional Laboratory for Education Research and Development. Workforce development is a major concern of “Systems Thinking.” The Teaching Research Laboratory at Monmouth, Oregon piloted “low cost simulated programs dealing directly with classroom management.” Bloom’s Taxonomies were used to define the instructional variables involved with instructional planning, i.e. the “Professional Use of Knowledge.” They provided the evaluation tool needed for data collection on both staff and student behavior and content.

According to the report, HEW studied “the possibilities of a social state-of-the-union” in the future based on a consumer (not producer) or service driven economy to answer the question “Can educational institutions change rapidly enough to meet the needs of a changing society?” The Rand Corporation, the Air Force, General Electric Company, and the United Nations were but a few of the organizations which attempted to forecast the future in accordance to NTL evolving outcomes. “Rand use[d] the ‘Delphi’ method in which a wide range of experts have confrontations and arrive finally at a near-consensus.” The years 1984, 2000, and 2100 were predicted or conceived with the later year being a time when “gravity may be controlled through some modifications of gravity fields,” as an example. The future is a time when man “must effectively forge human and natural resources to serve his fellow man and help create uniqueness.”

It was projected that the “technological-scientific elite” would “strain the democratic fabric to a ripping point,” that “regionalism” would “create tensions and strained public services,” that “the Young in age or in attitude” would be confronted by “Older members” over social change, that the “quality of living” would produce conflicts over “values and priorities,” that mass media would be used to prevent social disintegration as the American “melting pot” and separatists conflicted, that cooperations will form international groups, vast data banks on society will be in operation, that the flow of information will be such that “few individuals will be able to maintain control over their opinions,” being controlled by “competing opinion molders,” and that society would do a shift in values as a result of social mobility. The solution for all these problem areas, according to the study, was the use of laboratory experiences, interdisciplinary studies, encounter experiences, seminars on futurism, “Think-tanks,” conflict resolution group negotiations training, cybernetic experienced in non-school work, etc.

BSTEP was the first major attempt to bring an entire education institution under the control of the NTL program with the agenda of bringing all educational institutions under the same program. BSTEP was a federally funded pilot program for a global education system.